Structured Glossary of Technical Terms

The Impact of Digital Technologies

The digital computer technology revolution continues to open up
concepts, many of which are only just beginning to be understood or
accepted. These concepts are critically important to librarianship in
general and preservation in particular. In a world historically
dominated by paper, the same medium is used for document capture
(creation, recording),
storage, access, distribution and use, and there has been no compelling
need to consider these as separate entities. There has also been no
compelling need to distinguish between the format of a document and the
medium in which it is embodied, since there is only one dominant choice
of medium. Indeed, the terms have traditionally been used somewhat
interchangeably and indiscriminately. The introduction of non-paper
forms such as phonograph recordings and films has modified this
straightforward view somewhat, but traditional cataloging makes every
effort to foster the constraint that there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the format and the medium, with the objective of
identifying the combined format-medium with some physical shelf
location.

Further efforts to foster this constraint increasingly break down when
digital technologies enter the picture. Digital technologies open a
world that paradoxically is simultaneously more complex and, in some
ways, simpler. It is more complex because now the same document or
document format may intrinsically be represented in different media for
different purposes, forcefully motivating the need to distinguish
carefully between the format and the medium. Furthermore, different
media may be used interchangeably for different stages of document
handling, that is, for capture, storage, access, distribution, and use.
To complicate the situation even more, the documents may be encoded in a
myriad of ways at each of these stages.

And yet, separation of the format and the medium--and treating each
stage of document handling separately--may open up a more logical
structure free from traditional constraints. In this sense, digital
technologies may simplify certain aspects of librarianship.

Digital technologies present many new challenges, however, that must be
considered. For example, although these varying formats may be decoded
and translated back and forth among each other, many fear that the means
of decoding may become lost as a result of technological obsolescence,
conceivably making digitally stored documents inaccessible. There are
also many who question the longevity of the physical media used in
digital technologies. Others suggest that the appropriate way to address
both of these problems--as well as to take advantage of the declining
costs of computer storage and of increasing storage densities--may
well be to copy stored documents periodically onto new media.

Indeed the main advantage of the world of digital technologies, namely
that they represent a kind of "esperanto" of mutually comprehensible and
interchangeable formats, may, if not properly managed, also represent
their biggest weakness, because of the rapidity of change and
obsolescence, and because of the wide range of choices available at any
given time. Their
very attractiveness could lure the unwary or the uninformed into
dangerous territory.

Periodic recopying onto new media represents a whole new approach for
libraries to the operation and financing of "inventory management"
(although though such practices are quite common in data centers). The
implications could be quite extensive. Librarians tend to think in terms
of periods of centuries rather than having (or wanting) to recopy every
few years. Such considerations may either hinder the adoption of digital
technologies for preservation or other purposes or eventually cause some
rethinking of the underlying economics of librarianship.

The incentive for such potential reevaluation, however, is not limited
to the preservation of older materials, nor is the influence of
technology the only driving factor. The underlying stimulus is a gradual
transition over the centuries--perhaps spurred by the exponential
growth of recorded knowledge and information--from documents with
associated physical or conceptually useful lifetimes, times between new
editions, or, more generically, times between "instances", that can be
measured in decades or centuries; to documents with associated times
between instances measured in much shorter units of time--even, in the
case of "active documents" (see below), measured in minutes or seconds.

In essence, this represents a transition from "batch processing" to
"continuous processing." [2] The financial and other implications of
this could undoubtedly be far-reaching for libraries (a full
discussion is beyond the scope of this Glossary), introducing into
the library milieu unfamiliar (or, at least, largely unused)
concepts associated with continuous processes or processes with
relatively short lifetimes, such as "depreciation" and "lifecycle
costing." These are concepts that are familiar to the world of
digital electronic processing and quite normal outside of
universities, but that have been avoided in worlds--such as research
libraries--that depend to a greater or lesser extent upon irregular
gifts or grants of varying or unpredictable size, donations directed
to the purchase and immediate storage of documents, but not to their
maintenance. Indeed, one of the most serious questions facing
librarians in the future may be how to effect a match between the
changing economic demands of "continuous processes" and the
traditional nature of many funding sources. Will donors, for
example, be as willing to support the continuous demands of
technological processing as they have historically and generously
supported the periodic construction of library buildings? What
implications does the financing of continuous processes have for the
"free" and openly accessible library? [3]

Yet the potential of digital technologies and of the flexibility they
offer is boundless. Over the coming decades, these technologies may open
up vistas of ever-increasing storage densities to where entire libraries
can be electronically stored in the space of a single room; of blinding
access and distribution speeds allowing whole documents to be moved
almost instantly across the nation's (and indeed the world's) data
networks, leading to the concept of the "distributed library;" of ease
of replication at very modest cost (another cause for alarm,
particularly to those concerned with protection of intellectual
property); of "print-on-demand" where paper copies of documents are only
printed "just in time" and not inventoried in advance of need; of
accessibility at a distance away from where the "digital document" or
preservation copy was created or is stored; and of intelligent automated
document analysis. Indeed, the means of creation and production of
documents have already been revolutionized by these technologies.

These technologies also open up horizons for totally new document
formats, such as active documents whose contents may combine
different media such as text, sound, video or voice; or whose contents
may change dynamically with time, what Harvey Wheeler called "the
fungible book." [4] The preservation of these new "active" formats is
not of direct interest to the subject of preservation of more
traditional formats (and therefore beyond the scope of this Glossary),
but is of indirect interest because digitally preserved traditional
documents can be incorporated into such active documents. Furthermore,
contemporary active documents will become a subject of future
preservation interest.

Some view the introduction of digital technologies into the world of
libraries as likely to cause a revolution as far-reaching as that caused
by the printing-press: a massive paradigm shift. Others view the
introduction with concern (one cannot help but recall that the monks at
first also viewed the introduction of the printing press with equal
concern), an intimidating perturbation that disturbs an equilibrium and
modalities of scholarship that have served well for many decades or even
for centuries.

Either way, digital technologies cannot be ignored. They are already
with us. The question is not whether they will have a presence, but the
pace
and degree to which that presence will grow and influence. The next
twenty years are likely to be times of extraordinary change. Our
libraries--indeed our universities, colleges, and our scholarly
communities--may well be remade by the consequences of this
technological revolution.

And yet--in spite of technology's impact and of the revolutionary
consequences of that impact--it must be recognized that technology
itself is not the ultimate driving force. It is the inexorable pressure
caused by the exponential growth of recorded knowledge, and the
ever-increasing complexity, costs, and other problems associated with
the storage and distribution of, and access to, such information.
Technology can provide some solutions: it is not an end in itself.

Furthermore--for many reasons too numerous to detail here--the
"digital library" is not about to replace the "paper library." Both will
need to coexist in a shifting environment, at least for the foreseeable
future. This in itself will present librarians with many economic,
organizational, social, technical, and other challenges.

Between the eager apostles of technology and those who approach change
with extreme caution lies the mass of professionals who are trying to
understand and grapple with the potential of this shifting environment,
many of them implementing prototype activities designed to elucidate
greater insight, [5] many working to close the gap between promise and
reality.

It is to these professionals--from all fields--that this Glossary
is dedicated, to provide a common language for dialogue and mutual
understanding, particularly as is required to address the problems of
preservation, and the potential application of digital technologies to
those problems. The Glossary is not intended to be so comprehensive as
to satisfy the technologist only concerned with technologies, or the
librarian exclusively concerned with librarianship and preservation. It
is intended to satisfy the intersection of their concerns. On the other
hand, issues of preservation and access raise concepts that have
implications for librarianship as a whole, so that, in that sense, this
Glossary has consequences that are not limited to the preservation arena
alone.